Kael Whisperwind
Kael is a consummate musician and tale-teller - he knows what tunes to play and what stories to tell to please an audience, to stoke them up to anger or to calm their nerves, to incite love (of himself) or hatred (of someone else). He cultivates an air of mystery and intrigue, and while he can fit in with almost any crowd, he rarely reveals anything about himself or his past. He is an almost reflexive liar, and rarely tells the same lie twice, at least about himself - he doesn't expect to be believed, only to keep friend and foe alike off-guard. Kael worships Avandra, the goddess of change - his personal code is to always seek to shake up the status quo, to goad the powerful, mock the proud and bring down the establishment. Description Kael's hair is long, black and always lustrous - a gift of his elven heritage. His close-cut beard, on the other hand, always looks patchy and unkempt. Kael wears a battered tricorn hat and a travel-stained black longcoat with a great number of pockets. In these pockets he carries most of his belongings, from his treasured elven flute to his travel rations. History Kael was brought up in the Feywild by his Elven mother, a member of a merchant caravan that travelled between the great Eladrin cities, buying and selling strange and arcane wares. His mother sang and played the harp, skills which were much in demand from noble Eladrin, and Kael learned to sing and to play, and to sway others with his words and his music. As he grew up, he began to crave adventure - one day, he slipped away from the caravan into the goblin kingdom of Nachtur, to seek out the Great Gark. Instead, he was captured by the goblins. His voice and charm had little effect on them, and they forced him into slavery; toiling in the fields, he struck up a friendship with a fellow slave, a halfling cleric of Avandra. The old priest taught him the ways of his faith - a path of change, of revolution, of overthrowing old ways of thinking and old ways of ruling. When the priest died, crushed by years of savage beatings and maltreatment, Kael prayed for the first time in his life. The very next day, a drunken goblin overseer failed to fasten his chains securely and Kael slipped his bonds. Whispering thanks to Avandra, he ran and ran, until he found that, all unwitting, he had crossed over into the mortal world and could not get back to the Feywild. Now a dedicated follower of Avandra, Kael wanders the world, seeking to serve the goddess in the ways taught to him by the old halfling cleric. He lives on the road, always seeking out places where the powerful oppress the weak, and where rules and traditions smother the natural joy and freedom of living creatures. He believes passionately that power must always be challenged, and that towns and cities and even nations must keep changing in order to survive. Kael gives all his weapons names in Elven, often with a hidden pun in them - the longsword he carries now is "Maerlath" (Elven for "illegitimate child", making it his bastard sword), and his longbow is named "Kertalyn" (an Elven word meaning literally "soft arrow", used metaphorically to mean words spoken gently but with hidden malice). During Kael's slavery, he made friends with a wild Blink Dog pup. Feeling an uncanny sense of kinship with the scruffy, mangy, oddly lovable creature, Kael fed the little beast on scraps from his meagre food ration. When he escaped, the Blink Dog came with him, following at his heels as he fled through the briars and thorn-brakes of Nachtur. He called the dog Amaer'nathengwen (Ama for short), mainly because he loves the idea of a scruffy little creature having such a long, noble-sounding name (an Elven word which means, appropriately enough, "untidy-haired"). Ama looks, to the untrained eye, like a hound of the type commonly used for hunting rats and rabbits. Category:Bariaurs Category:Bards Category:Inhabitants of Virkung